Poll campaign starts in Iraq

April 02, 2014 - 7:07:10 am

Election posters are hung along a street in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk yesterday.

BAGHDAD: Campaigning for Iraq’s April 30 general election opened yesterday, with Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki bidding for a third term as his government grapples with the country’s worst bloodshed in years.

Iraqis face a long list of daily struggles, ranging from lengthy power cuts and poor running water and sewerage to rampant corruption and high levels of unemployment, to say nothing of a seemingly endless stream of attacks which have killed more than 2,200 people this year.

Six members of the security forces were killed yesterday, as new figures showed unrest was still near its highest level since 2008.

“There are new faces, but these are the same old blocs,” said Mazin Rumayadh, a 26-year-old employee of a Baghdad-based food wholesaler, voicing disdain for the apparent lack of progress since the last general election in March 2010. “There is no need for them to fill the streets with posters — they are only making the streets dirty and causing traffic jams.

Political parties began plastering posters across Baghdad and the rest of the country, with more than 9,000 candidates vying for one of 328 parliamentary seats.

No single party is expected to win an absolute majority and previous elections have seen lengthy periods of government formation.

Elections in Iraq are rarely fought over political issues, with parties instead appealing to voters along sectarian, ethnic or tribal lines. On some of the posters already up, for example, tribes voice pride over one of their members running for parliament.

Messages on other posters attempt to link would-be lawmakers with political leaders such as Maliki. “We started putting up our posters in crowded areas of Baghdad, and in places we know many people live and pass through,” said Munaf Al Haidari, running in the election for a breakaway offshoot of the premier’s party.

“We have divided Baghdad into different areas, and we are targeting the areas where we have the most supporters,” Haidari said.

Maliki’s State of Law Alliance is widely seen as the frontrunner to secure the largest single number of seats in the polls, Iraq’s first since March 2010.

But the bloc will encounter stiff competition in its traditional Shia-dominated heartland of south Iraq from the Citizens List, a formerly powerful group seen as close to Iran, and Ahrar party that was until recently linked to radical Shia cleric Moqtada Al Sadr.

In the Sunni-majority west and north, a variety of Sunni blocs are expected to compete for votes including those led by the parliament speaker and a deputy prime minister respectively. And in the autonomous northern Kurdish region, a historic duopoly could be further dented by a relatively new political party that has made inroads in recent polls.